2021/10/28 by Ossi Nokelainen, Nicholas E. Scott‐Samuel, Yonggang Nie +2 · 1 citation
Environmental Science · Psychology · Neuroscience · #Wildlife Ecology and Conservation #Primate Behavior and Ecology #Olfactory and Sensory Function Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41598-021-00742-4
openalex publication_date 2021/10/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is an iconic mammal, but the function of its black-and-white coloration is mysterious. Using photographs of giant pandas taken in the wild and state-of-the-art image analysis, we confirm the counterintuitive hypothesis that their coloration provides camouflage in their natural environment. The black fur blends into dark shades and tree trunks, whereas white fur matches foliage and snow when present, and intermediate pelage tones match rocks and ground. At longer viewing distances giant pandas show high edge disruption that breaks up their outline, and up close they rely more on background matching. The results are consistent across acuity-corrected canine, feline, and human vision models. We also show quantitatively that the species animal-to-background colour matching falls within the range of other species that are widely recognised as cryptic. Thus, their coloration is an adaptation to provide background matching in the visual environment in which they live and simultaneously to afford distance-dependent disruptive coloration, the latter of which constitutes the first computational evidence of this form of protective coloration in mammals.